


Little Ones

by Jezunya



Series: Billy Goat Gruff [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Cultural Differences, Depression, Dwarf Culture, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hobbit Culture, Hobbit Under the Mountain, Kid Fic, King and Consort, Loneliness, M/M, Protective Thorin, Schmoop, Thorin POV, Thorin is a schmoopy old dwarf, Thorin's got the baby bug, bilbo in erebor, except not, post-BotFA, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-02
Updated: 2015-06-02
Packaged: 2018-04-02 13:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4061608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jezunya/pseuds/Jezunya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Really, Thorin,” Bilbo scoffed. He was seated on the floor before the hearth in their sitting room, a quivering, blanket-wrapped bundle in his lap. “You’d think you would recognize one of your own war rams.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Ones

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a cracky idea about Bilbo getting a pet goat and it wreaking havoc throughout the mountain, but then I started writing Thorin’s pov and it got all… serious…

Thorin gave a long, slow exhale as he stepped across the threshold into the royal apartment, allowing the door to swing shut behind him – and then froze at the sight before him. “What… is that?”

“Really, Thorin,” Bilbo scoffed. He was seated on the floor before the hearth in their sitting room, a quivering, blanket-wrapped bundle in his lap. “You’d think you would recognize one of your own war rams.”

“That is not a war ram.”

The tiny goatling wormed its head around the crook of Bilbo’s elbow to give a pathetic little bleat in Thorin’s direction. “Well, no, obviously not,” his husband acceded, drawing the animal’s attention back to the waterskin in his hand. A drop of milky whiteness dribbled from its tip before the goat latched onto it again. “It’s just a baby right now. A… baby war ram.”

“It’s a runt.”

Bilbo turned his head to scowl up at him, hazel eyes accusatory and somehow wounded as he cradled the creature against his chest. “That’s what the breeder said! He was going to have him sent to the kitchens, can you believe that?”

“That’s normally what they do with runts, yes,” he grumbled, moving further into the room to dump his formal outer robes onto one of the armchairs before the fire.

“Well, I think it’s awful,” Bilbo replied frostily, turning away again. “The rams all belong to the crown anyway, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t keep this one.”

Thorin could feel his brows pulling down and together, a dull ache starting up right between his eyes. He lifted one hand to massage at the bridge of his nose; his day had been far too long for this. “It’s going to shit everywhere if you keep it in here.”

Bilbo huffed, rather pointedly keeping his back to Thorin now. “Yes, thank you, I do understand how livestock animals work, Thorin. He’s got a diaper for now until I can get him housebroken, or at least weaned.”

Slowly, Thorin lowered his hand to stare at the back of the hobbit’s curly head and felt something like lead settle in the pit of his stomach as an impossible thought occurred to him. Diapers, milk bottles, a tiny bundle swaddled in blankets… And Bilbo’s gaze so soft as he looked down at the little creature, his shoulders hunched defensively against Thorin’s attention, a quietness about him, a wistfulness that Thorin couldn’t quite parse.

They had never discussed the topic of children. Thorin already had his heirs, and Bilbo had arranged for Bag End to go to his young cousin Drogo once the caravans from Ered Luin had secured all of his personal belongings and keepsakes from the hobbit hole. Children were a blessing from Mahal, as rare amongst his people as the dwarf women who bore them, jealously guarded by their parents and families – but perhaps hobbits did things differently? Thorin had seen more children running about in the short time he’d spent in the Shire than at any point amongst his own kind. Perhaps, in the Shire, it was customary for same-sex couples to help rear the clan’s children, or even to adopt some as their own.

Perhaps Bilbo had expected that such would be the case when he and Thorin had married.

“Bilbo,” Thorin called softly, edging closer to the pair on the floor. “Ghivashel, is there something… Do you want…” Bilbo tilted his head back to look up at him, brows rising questioningly as Thorin’s words faltered. The dwarf sighed, scrubbed a hand down his face, and at last decided that the direct path was probably the most prudent. “Is this meant to be a hint that you wish to adopt a child?”

Thorin could not imagine what parent would ever willingly part with a child of their own – the idea of one of his nephews going off to live with a stranger when they were young, even with a relation, rather than with their mother and uncle, sent chills down his spine, a twist of nausea blossoming in his gut. Adoption was all but unheard of amongst dwarves, with orphaned children being the sole exception, and then there were strict traditions and laws to determine who would be awarded the privilege of raising them, so as to keep families and clans from falling to in-fighting as the many childless couples amongst them all clamored for the honor.

Hobbits were different, though. A fertile couple might produce ten, fifteen, even as many as twenty younglings during their lives, if Bilbo’s tales of his homeland were to be believed. Perhaps, with so many, it was not so unusual for one or two babes to be given over to those who could not bear their own? Perhaps it was not so gut-wrenching a prospect when the entire village helped to look after the hobbitlings anyway, children scampering about in mischievous packs and passing between houses like droplets in a stream.

“What?” Bilbo’s confused voice pulled him from his thoughts, and he focused once more to find his husband looking up at him as if Thorin were babbling the most ridiculous nonsense he had ever heard. After a moment, though, Bilbo seemed to grasp what Thorin had said, and he looked back down at the tiny suckling ram in his lap. “Oh. Oh, no! Honestly.” He shook his head, sending curls and short little braids rustling about his ears, but he was still frowning down at the floor when Thorin came around to stand in front of him.

“We could, you know,” he murmured, crouching down to Bilbo’s eye level on the floor. “Either seek to adopt a little hobbitling from the Shire or… There is another way. It is… not a common practice, but it is possible.” Female couples had been known to use donations of a trusted male’s seed in order to bear children, after all. They could try to find a dwarrowdam uninterested in rearing children of her own, one who shared Thorin’s coloring and general looks, who might agree to act as surrogate for a child born of Bilbo’s seed. The babe would be half-hobbit and, while not technically of Thorin’s blood, the closest possible approximation of their two halves creating a new whole. A tiny child with Bilbo’s smile and Thorin’s eyes, a head of wild hobbitish curls that were yet as dark as any Durin’s. Little arms reaching in the air to be picked up, fingers grasping at his beard, his braids, just as his nephews used to do when they were so very small.

The image sat like a warm coal beneath Thorin’s breastbone, nestling in somewhere right next to his heart.

“And what would we do with a little one running about here?” Bilbo cut through his thoughts once more, sounding exasperated if also slightly amused. He shook his head, dropping Thorin’s gaze again, and the smile he directed at the kid in his lap seemed self-deprecating to Thorin’s eyes, bitter even. “I know you helped raise Fíli and Kíli, but honestly, I don’t know the first thing about handling fauntlings. Aside from telling them stories, I suppose, and that only when their parents weren’t shooing them away, as anyone who was a bachelor at my age wasn’t someone they wanted as a role model.”

“You are not a bachelor now,” Thorin pointed out, trying to catch Bilbo’s eye with a small half-smile.

“No,” the hobbit agreed slowly, though he still would not meet Thorin’s gaze. “Though I quite expected to be. Children were never anything I ever considered as part of my future, even in a more peripheral role. As it is, it’s come as a bit of a shock that Drogo keeps insisting he’ll name me godfather to any children he and Primula have, never mind that I’m halfway across the world and hardly what most of the Shire would consider a good influence for their young ones.”

Thorin had to grind his teeth together to suppress a frustrated sigh at that; they had had this argument more than enough times in the past few years since Bilbo made Erebor his permanent home. Thorin hated hearing such talk about his beloved and the harsh judgments slung against him by Shire society, but his protests were inevitably met first with matter-of-fact acceptance and then, if he persisted, with pointed accounts of the various prejudices present in dwarven culture, not least being how very improper it was – scandalous, even _sacrilegious_ , if you asked some of the more conservative factions in the kingdom – for the king of such a great dwarvish realm to have married outside his race.

“I think any youngling would be very fortunate indeed to have you for a role model, azyungel,” Thorin said into the silence stretching between them, trying for gentle and diplomatic even as the mere thought of either dwarves or hobbits judging Bilbo as wanting in any respect rankled against his very core.

It wasn’t as if Thorin thought Bilbo perfect; they were neither one of them anywhere near, but their imperfections were theirs to share and not anyone else’s to comment or speculate upon.

“I appreciate the vote of confidence, at least,” Bilbo murmured in response, none of his usual snark present in his voice, and then, after a moment, he asked, “Is that… something you would want?” His gaze was cautious as he at last looked up at Thorin. “A child, I mean?”

Thorin pursed his lips and decided he may as well answer honestly. The image of a tiny hobbit child with dark hair and wide blue eyes burned bright beneath his ribs, almost near enough to touch. “Yes. Though I admit I hadn’t ever given it any thought before…” He gestured at the goatling in Bilbo’s lap, who had begun to squirm now that the milk seemed to have run dry.

“Ah.” Bilbo nodded, understanding, then said firmly, “He’s just a pet, Thorin.” He glanced up with a brief flash of a smile – one that turned brittle again the moment he looked down at the little animal in his lap and added very quietly, “I just didn’t think he should have to be dinner just because he was smaller than all the others.”

And suddenly, Thorin understood. Bilbo was curled up around the baby animal, shoulders drooping and head bowed as he pulled gentle fingertips through the kid’s soft fur. His gaze didn’t lift to meet Thorin’s, and the smile of mere moments ago had been all but subsumed by a small, soft frown marring his expressive face.

Thorin knew what it was to be surrounded by people bigger than him, with strange customs and stranger expectations of him. Knew what it was to suddenly find himself the runt of the litter, the outsider whom no one thought would last the week, let alone have anything to contribute – and he’d at least been able to return home to his kin in the Blue Mountains every year after the long, exhausting months spent laboring amongst humans. His comment when he’d first entered and discovered the little goat in Bilbo’s lap, about the usual fate of runts, of those too small to measure up, felt cruel now, and it filled him with a wash of guilt that was all too familiar to him. The fact that he himself had treated Bilbo that way in the early days of their acquaintance, as something small and insignificant, an annoyance and a burden, was something that still plagued him to this day, and his behavior now felt like a too-close echo of that time.

For all that Thorin knew Bilbo was generally happy here, surrounded by friends and family-by-marriage, he could not help wondering, thinking, now, as he watched his hobbit, that it was perhaps not always enough. He had Thorin, and Fíli and Kíli and Dís, and all the members of the Company and any of the dwarves of Thorin’s court whom he’d managed to befriend over the years, yet he was still, in a few small but important ways, utterly alone within the mountain. His friends and family loved him, and the people, for the most part, respected him – either out of true gratitude for his role in defeating the dragon and restoring their home, or out of simple propriety, as the spouse of the king – but they did not understand him. No matter how long Bilbo lived here, he would always be something of an oddity, from his beardless face and his small, soft stature to his need for a garden and a kitchen of his own, for sunshine on his face and warm earth between his toes. Even the Company members, despite their unwavering love for him, were sometimes known to shrug and laugh off Bilbo’s more hobbitish values, saying he was ‘just being his odd little self’ – words that Thorin knew stung more often than Bilbo was usually willing to admit.

“We can take him to the royal stables,” he murmured after several long moments of silence, and found himself reaching out a hand to gently run his fingers down the ruff of fur along the kid’s neck, as Bilbo had done. The goatling turned its head to regard him with one flat eye and let out a disgruntled-sounding bleat. Thorin huffed, then looked at Bilbo once more, continuing. “He’ll be well cared for there, and they’ll be able to train him up for riding when he’s old enough.”

Bilbo’s gaze finally lifted, looking up at Thorin through his lashes, as though hesitant to reveal the full extent of the loneliness – or the beginnings of hope – in his hazel eyes. “Really? But… I thought he was too small.”

“He’ll never be big enough to bear a dwarf warrior in full plate armor into battle,” Thorin replied, giving a half-smile as he looked down at the little animal again, “but maybe, when he’s full grown, he’ll be able to carry one hobbit around the mountain.”

The corners of Bilbo’s lips twitched, just starting to smile in earnest. “And… he’s not going to disappear into a pot of stew the moment my back is turned?”

“Such an attempt against the Consort’s personal steed would be an act of high treason,” Thorin growled, scowling fiercely, and was rewarded with the sound of Bilbo’s bell-like giggles. He smiled and couldn’t help leaning across to press a kiss to the hobbit’s forehead. “Come,” Thorin said, sitting back on his heels, and held his hands out to lift the little animal from Bilbo’s lap. “He’ll do better amongst a herd of his own kind than shut up in our quarters. Plus, I have it on good authority that the stablehands are paid quite handsomely to clean up animal shit so that the rest of us don’t have to.”

Bilbo continued to laugh at him as they both climbed to their feet. The blanket fell away from the baby ram as it began to squirm in Thorin’s grasp, revealing some form of rudimentary cloth swaddling about his nethers, but then Bilbo was turning and standing on his toes to tug Thorin down by his braids and press a kiss to his mouth. “Thank you,” he whispered against the dwarf’s lips.

Thorin let his eyes fall shut, dropping his forehead to rest against Bilbo’s. “Anything you need,” he breathed, “anything you desire, and you know I will do all in my power to grant it.”

“I know,” Bilbo replied just as softly, and Thorin could feel the sweet, genuine smile on his lips as Bilbo tilted his face up to kiss him again. “As I would do for you, my love. Even… Even something as ridiculous as a child of our own,” he added shyly, smiling gently up at Thorin as he settled back to his usual height once more.

Thorin felt everything within him still, the entire world seeming to hold its breath at the possibility before him, the mere chance that they could— that they might—

A sudden warm wetness struck the front of Thorin’s tunic, yanking him out of his trance, and he took a startled step backwards, holding the wriggling goatling up at arm’s length between them. It took only a moment to figure out what had happened, and he squeezed his eyes shut, unable to suppress a longsuffering sigh. “Bilbo?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve never learned how to properly secure a diaper, have you?”

He opened his eyes to see Bilbo blink, his brows rising in surprise and concern, and then the hobbit looked down at where the kid had successfully kicked off his cloth bindings and then proceeded to piss all down Thorin’s front. “Oh dear,” he murmured. A moment later, though, he looked up at Thorin again with a cheeky grin. “Well, I suppose this means you’ll have to be in charge of diaper duty when we have a little one of our own,” he said brightly, and then laughed at Thorin’s scowl all the way to the stables.

**Author's Note:**

> Thorin’s literally imagining little bitty babby Frodo as their child, lbh.
> 
> Come find me [on tumblr](http://jezunya.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
